MPs Demand Britain Double Refugee Intake, Import Fivefold More From Africa

Britain
DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty Images
Virginia Hale

A cross-party committee of MPs has demanded Britain double the number of refugees imported directly from the third world, and to expand the working rights of asylum seekers.

In a report published Tuesday, the International Development Committee argued that both moves would see Britain set a good example, policy-wise, to governments in sub-Saharan Africa.

Chairman of the committee, Stephen Twigg, said in a statement: “It is so important that the UK behaves at home as it is asking some of the world’s poorest nations to do.

“We should not be asking nations to house and employ refugees when the numbers we take in are so small, and the employment freedoms limited,” the Labour MP added.

Asylum seekers’ “right to work” is “essential to enabling self-reliance and dignity”, according to the report, which insists that the UK government “must lead by example” on this issue, and review current policies preventing most foreign nationals who sneaked into Britain illegally from taking up paid employment.

The recommendation echoes months of growing calls on this issue from NGOs and celebrities, however policy think tank Migration Watch warned strongly against the loosening of restrictions in October, noting that such a move would encourage illegal economic migration, when already more than half of the 26,000 asylum claims made in the UK each year are unsuccessful — even after appeal.

According to the MPs’ report, which repeatedly refers to commitments under the UN Global Compact for Refugees signed in December last year, Britain should also raise the number of refugees it resettles directly from third world camps to UK towns and villages from just over 5,000 a year to 10,000 annually.

Highlighting figures from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre which alleged that 15,000 people had to leave their homes every day in 2017, in sub-Saharan Africa, the committee said Britain should raise the number of refugees it resettles from the region up from 450 in 2017/18 to 2,500 per annum in future years.

Analysis from immigration policy watchdog organisations such as NumbersUSA have long pointed out that resettling large numbers of people from poor countries in wealthy Western nations does nothing to resolve the challenges in the former — especially with the third world’s population set to explode in coming decades.

A 2015 report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) argued it would be much more cost-effective for Western nations to help Middle Eastern refugees in the region, where caring for 12 displaced people would cost the same as resettling just one in the U.S.

The London-based NGO War Child arrived at similar figures when looking at the economics of resettling people in EU nations, reporting in 2016 that “caring for the basic needs of a refugee in Europe costs at least ten times as much as in countries neighbouring Syria.”

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